Quality Management in the Hospitality Industry

Subject: Management
Pages: 5
Words: 1274
Reading time:
6 min
Study level: Master

Introduction

In any form of organization, service and product quality is a mandatory requirement. An organization that does not emphasize proper and coordinated quality delivery is bound to fail. It is thus necessary to develop a framework that supports quality delivery to the clientele. In his research (Clark, 2005) Consider the ever changing business and market trends in the world, an organization that thrives to acquire a sustainable market niche is thus supposed to plan and implement optimized quality delivery to its clients in order to mitigate chances of incurring unnecessary loss of its market. In his book (Jan, 2008) states that improved quality also saves on the time used by the organization, in so doing; proper development of other important factors that contribute to the organization development is thus acquired.

According to Barney (2001), competitive advantage of a firm is acquired through a series of constructive development that will reduce the cost and increase the organization’s efficiency. More so an organization that is customer oriented should give service to its customers a paramount consideration in order to satisfy their needs. It is also important to note that the perception of the customer is easily changed once the customer notices some signs of inefficiencies in the organization. Through his studies (Brooks, 2006) states that the given the challenges of the market demand, getting back such a customer can prove to be very challenging. It is the basis of this concept that the emergence of customer behavior analysis commenced in the early 1960’s. The idea behind this study was essentially based on the fundamental principles of quality management in the generation of goods and products to a company’s clients. In their research (Buchanan & Huczynski, 2004) concludes that Proper analysis of this situation has seen the technological changes aimed at improving goods and services in a manner that is profitable to the company while at the same time keeping the clients happy.

In their studies (Brady & Brand, 2002) state that the Fundamental strategies that guide quality management were formed a long time ago and these practices have assisted managers and workers control the output that will finally end to the customer. These strategies include, Six Sigma, TQM AND QFD. All these strategies have been developed in order improve quality in business processes as well as products.

Six Sigma

In their book (Kang & James, 2004) state that Sigma 6 is one of the most used process of project management based on its supporting facts, the only disadvantage of the process is its slow application process, otherwise there are a number of advantages as clearly elaborated below since it was the chosen method of implementation of necessary improvements in the health center. In their studies (Zeithaml, & Berry, 1996) conclude that one of the fundamental ways of quality management and profit maximization in any institution including a health institution is through optimization of the existing system or an implementation of another system that will oversee the improvement based on the existing system. According to (Damelio, 1996) One of the most commonly used method of quality management and service delivery is the sigma 6 concept. In essence sigma 6 concept was founded by Motorola Company in the USA in 1981. In his studies (Gupta,2008) concludes that Like other quality improvement methods that have been proposed by specialist over the years, the approach of these system improvement proposals is normally different but the aim is usually the same.

In their book (Kumar & Morris, 2007) state that fundamentally therefore, in any system that has been used for several years, there is a way or an alternative efficient way of ensuring quality management and improvement.

The concepts behind sigma 6 that is not in the other proposals that have been done in the past decades include the following;

  1. There is need for an elaborate focus on achieving results that are quantifiable by nature meaning that there is a financial gain in the proposed process.
  2. The management of the system should be strong and essentially more passionate or rather results oriented in order to meet the requirement of the system.
  3. In sigma 6, there is needed to establish an infrastructure that classifies the proposed methods of implementation on the basis of classification rather than abstract assumption or perception of the proposal. This in essence means that a more practical rather than theoretical approach should be assumed in the process.
  4. According to (Boland, 1996) the implementation of the proposed plan should have a more stable emphasis on verifiable results from data obtained from the proposed approach, unlike other quality improvement methods, sigma 6 emphasizes on the need to improve system efficiency and profitability without basing the decision making process or the implemented proposal on assumptions.

TQM

In their book (Rust & Zahorik,1993) concludes that Total Quality Management is another quality management strategy that is based on reducing errors generated all through the manufacturing or service course. All this is done to improve client satisfaction, make supply management processes more efficient, plan for equipment upgrade and make sure that staff are trained to have the hands-on competency. One of the major goals of Total Quality Management is to restrict faults to one per one million units formed. Total Quality Management is frequently linked with the expansion, operation, and safeguarding of organizational and institutional structures that are requisite for a variety of business and quality management processes. The main difference between Total Quality Management and Six Sigma is that this system tries to develop quality by guarantying conformance to internal conditions, while Six Sigma is centered on advancing quality by decreasing the quantity of faults.

Quality Function Deployment

This is another quality management strategy that is utilized in the transformation of user requirements into design quality. In their book (Cronin & Taylor,1992)comment that It is also utilized in the deployment of the utilities that form quality, and also in the deployment strategies for the purpose of integrating the design quality into subsystems and component sections. Quality Function Deployment is intended to assist planners center on the features of the latest or a product that is currently at hand. This could extend to services from the perspective of market segmentation, institutional or technological development requirements. This method gives results through graphs and matrices.

Quality Function Deployment assists in the transformation of client requirements into engineering features.

Benefits of quality Management in the Hospitality Industry

Improved quality makes an organization to be more competitive in addition to making the company stay afloat. This also makes an organization create more jobs (Zeithaml & Berry, 1996). Improved service quality also helps an organization reduce its costs of running the business and this result in increased profits. Research has shown that the service quality of an organization is directly proportional to its financial success (Brady & Brand, 2002). Therefore, an organization with poor quality of goods and services will have fewer returns than a company, which heavily invests in production of quality services and goods. Service quality also helps the company to attain customer satisfaction (Kang & James, 2004). This in turn helps the company have long term customers and increases efficiency. This results in an expanded market share. Thus, the profits are also increased as the company reaps from increased volume of sales (Yang, 2003). The increased base of satisfied customers means that less is spent on attracting more new customer and thus reducing cost of running the business. This is because the satisfied customers influence other potential customers by their word of mouth (Kumar & Morris, 2007). Thus, the satisfied customers act as promotional agents for the organization at no pay.

Reference List

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Boland, P. (1996) Redesigning Healthcare Delivery: A Practical Guides to Reengineering, Restructuring, and Renewal. UK, Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Brady, M., Cronin, J. & Brand, R.(2002) Performance-only measurement of service quality: a replication and extension. Journal of Business Research, vol. 55, pp. 17-31.

Brooks, P. (2006) Metrics for IT Service Management, Van Haren Publishing, pp. 76– 77.

Buchanan, D. & Huczynski, A. (2004) Organizational behaviour: An introductory text. 5th edition. England, Pearson Education Limited.

Clark, A. (2005) The Gist of Process Mapping: How to Record, Analyse, and Improve Work Processes. UK, World4Word.

Cronin, J. & Taylor, S. (1992) Measuing service quality: A re-examination and extension. Journal of Marketing, vol. 56, pp. 55-68.

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Gupta, P. (2008) The Six Sigma Performance Handbook: A Statistical Guide to Optimizing Results. New York, McGraw-Hill.

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Kumar, V. & Morris, G. (2007) Measuring and maximising customer equity: A critical analysis. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Sciences, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 157- 17.

Rust, R. & Zahorik, A. (1993) Customer satisfaction, customer retention and market share, Journal of Retailing, vol. 69, pp. 145-156.

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Zeithaml, V., Parasuraman, A. & Berry, L. (1996) The behavioural consequences of service quality. Journal of Marketing, vol. 60, no. 2, p. 31-46.